Wow, this is, like, a really, really, different country, Dude - totally.

 Everywhere in Europe we found these outdoor, coin operated espresso machines - full range - espresso, cappuccino, macchiato.  Need investors for USA franchise opportunities.

 We crossed the border from Romania - dirty, poor, backward with people who appeared grim, rarely a spontaneous smile or wave.  Arrived on the Bulgarian side of the river in an industrial port city, but rode downtown to find a clean open spaced center of town with freshly painted houses, open squares with green grass, trees, fountains, smiling people, spontaneous waves, folks willing to teach a few words of Bulgarian with great laughs at our attempt to pronounce the words.

It's like, well, a different country.

 The opera house in Ruse - featuring a performance of Aida - not sure if they have elephants for the triumphal entry.

40 years ago I took a year of high school Russian.  It's been very helpful in Bulgaria which uses the Cyrillic alphabet - same as Russian.  Many of the letters are pronounced differently, and there are many letters unlike anything in the latin alphabet - for instance the backwards looking capital R that is pronounced "ya", and a backwards "n" that is pronounced "ee".  So, being able to phonetically  sound out a sign often yields a completely recognizable work:  EKCnPEC  actually sounds out to "express".  I can't carry on any sort of a conversation, but being able to read signs is a great help.  Never thought that a high school course, unused for 40 years, would return to help me.

 We spent a week in Romania and saw many massive statues - Soviet era "uplifting" statues of workers, soldiers, women dressed as soldiers and workers.  But nary an exposed breast.  It was reassuring to come to Bulgaria and see naked women again.  This statue of a young lady being sprayed in a fountain suggests that even for a statue, cold water sprayed on your back is a chilling experienced.

 Stopped at a store to restock some cookies and Fanta.  This kid and his dad were there (kid's on a bike with training wheels) and we couldn't speak, but did a lot of smiling gestures at each other.  They took off riding and I later caught up with them and got big waves and smiles as I rode by.

 The sunflowers are past their prime here and are turning brown, but the fields go on for miles and miles.  Today's ride often went along the ridges of rolling hills and we could see the fields going off to the horizon.  Bulgarian farms seem to be highly mechanized compared to Romania - lots of large machinery, some new - but lots of an age that would have been retired in North America.  We did see some horse drawn wagons, but in Romania horse drawn seemed to be a very large portion of the work force, here the fields are larger (the terrain is not that much different - here it rolls and rolls, in Romania it was quite hilly at the foot of the mountains, but rapidly gave way to extensive flat plains that could have been mechanized, but seemed to have not been).  I'll avoid the argument of whether mechanization is really progress.

We rode over a big ridge and down into Veliko Tarnovo (many different latinized spellings) - once the capital of Bulgaria, with old fortresses and palaces.  Now a tourist city of 200,000.  Quite a beautiful place on cliffs overlooking goosenecks in the river below.

....................

The overall impression of Bulgaria as being so different from its neighbor:  happier, friendlier, cleaner, more progressive - is quite overwhelming.  In Romania we struggled to find stuff that we could comment favorably upon.  Here, we're positively happy with our surroundings and our experiences.

(One side note:  in Romania, there were quite noticeable differences between the Northern part of the country - Transylvania, and the southern part - Wallachia.  Transylvania was friendlier, the drivers were less agressive - our 3 episodes of drivers deliberately trying to injure cyclists were in Wallachia.)

Remember, that both of these countries are smaller than many American states in both size, and population.

Why is that?  Was the 20 years of Ceausescu sufficient to beat down the spirit as well as the economy of Romania to the point where it is still early in its recovery, 25 years later?  (And required a violent revolution to dump President-for-life Mr C - whereas Bulgaria was already liberalizing prior to a peaceful first democratic election in 1989, which the renamed Communists, now Socialists, won.  And, an economy that actually lost ground in the decades since the end of the Communist planned economy.) Or, is there a societal history that goes back further and runs deeper, that underlies the differences?  Although the era of bad Mr C must have some influence, I think there must be more.  Just one example:  Bulgaria fought both World Wars on the side of Germany, but seems to have been a political and economic move of necessity and never bought into the full Nazi program:  refused to participate in the German turnaround to attack Russia and abstained from that part of the war.  And most tellingly, refused to allow the Nazis access to the Bulgarian Jews and was able to protect nearly all of the Jews of Bulgaria from deportation and death.  Something goes back further than the postwar disruptions.